


The Ephemeris Archive

by Falcolmreynolds



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Aliens, Biotics (Mass Effect), Gen, Lore - Freeform, Misuse of Biotics, Outsider Perspective, World Exploration, Worldbuilding, i love that there's also a tag, just some fun stuff :), that's great
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22214629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falcolmreynolds/pseuds/Falcolmreynolds
Summary: You ever see the descriptions of planets in the games, with those tantalizing little tidbits of stories, and wish you could know more? Well... here you go.Stories from the various planets of the Milky Way galaxy.Sometimes this updates.





	The Ephemeris Archive

Location: Sheol system, Hades Nexus

* * *

Zara Haddock crouched on the hard-packed ground inside the crypt, breathing in the stale, dusty air. Outside, the dull, dirty yellow-green soil, brighter yellow-hued rocks, and dusty-colored plants glowed in Sheol’s light. Here in the band around the planet’s day and night zones, the temperature was only  _ almost _ boiling outside, which meant plants could grow with relative ease, providing some cover from the light and wind and wildlife.

Her dig site was sprawled over much of this area, but she’d been focused on these particular stones for quite a few weeks now, slowly digging them out. They’d been deliberately piled here, she knew, and some careful manipulation of them had revealed the long-busted doorway to what looked like yet another ancient burial chamber.

Could be something of interest in here, though, she’d thought, and so Zara had taken the time to properly remove the door and open it up, curious about its contents. Usually Protheans didn’t end up buried alone unless they were people of importance; with their heavy cultural emphasis on duty and conformity, many were laid beside total strangers and those unrelated to themselves in large crypts. This was a little more unusual than that.

The interior of the crypt was as dry as the planet’s surface outside, but at least it was dark, and cooler than the direct - if muted - sunlight of the surface. She’d had to use her suit lights to search through the mostly-preserved rubble.

For the first time in years, though, Zara had finally gotten lucky. She’d found an old datapad of some sort - not one she could use, at first, but it seemed to be in working condition. The technology was Prothean, but familiar enough that she could get it turned on.

She knew Prothean script. She could identify  _ some _ of the markings on these. If she was lucky, she’d be able to unlock it, and try to see what secrets it held.

Zara had spent several hours squinting at the carvings around the doorway. She’d reasoned one of them was probably the name required to access the datapad; after many attempts, and several (she assumed) lockouts, she’d finally managed to get it open.

Now, to decipher the text.

Inside were a few files buried in layers of encryption, but that was no problem for her and her automated cracking programs. Zara sat, crossing her legs, and opened the first one. It was going to take a while, but she could probably decipher a good deal of the contents. It was rather rare to find Prothean data stored like this, written; normally, their data was transmitted directly into the user’s mind, so they didn’t actually write anything down. Since human biology was not compatible with Prothean tech - very little was - human scientists usually couldn’t absorb Prothean data when they encountered it. This was a unique opportunity.

“Start recording,” Zara said. She preferred to read aloud and have her tech record what she said, then transcribe it later, rather than writing things down the first time; often trying to read and type simultaneously confused her.

The holo-window of a recorder popped up, the bright blue line in the middle flat as it awaited her input. She cleared her throat.

“Record of,” she started, and sighed. “Name of crypt inhabitant, needs to be deciphered later. Near as I can tell that reads something along the lines of… uh, of… well, the symbols here indicate a high ‘ee’ sound right next to something that could be an X sound, and I can tell it ends in a hard consonant, but that’s about it. So this is - this is the record of the crypt inhabitant, whose name I will do my  _ very best _ to transliterate into something readable later.”

Far away, in the distance, came a cracking sound, like thunder. It reverberated around the valley; Zara glanced up, towards the sheltered entryway to the crypt, then back down to the datapad.

“There’s a couple of different entries here,” she said, looking at the short list that came up when she’d cycled through the different functions on the datapad. “By the way, this datapad… most of the, um… let’s call them apps, huh? They’re basically apps, as far as I can tell. Most of them appear to be defunct. Probably needed something like an extranet connection to function, but unfortunately, their extranet’s been down for about fifty thousand years.” She paused. “Wouldn’t be something to find a Prothean extranet server? Or - no, wait, is that their beacons? No, those are relays. Sort of. Those are servers and relays both. You know, it’s really hard to make analogies when the things you’re trying to compare aren’t really analogous. And they’re not, not really, because our data transmission methods are so different. Which is why this datapad is so interesting! But who knows, maybe it’s just  _ really _ old. That’d be a nice find.” She paused. “But no, this isn’t the Prothean homeworld. They had space travel by the time this thing was invented, whatever it is. Maybe it’s more like a kid’s toy, like a… child’s first omni-tool, sort of?” Zara contemplated this for a few seconds. “If so, that’s depressing. Don’t want to find  _ that _ in a crypt.”

The datapad flickered in her hands. She redirected her attention to it. “Oof. Don’t want this to die, I just only now got it working. Thankfully it’s solar powered, but it’s still pretty fragile. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

She selected the first of the listed records. She could spot the symbols that meant numbers; as far as she could tell, this was the oldest of the entries.

“Okay. The date on this one is, hmm… Prothean timescales are pretty different from ours, based on a completely different series of events and important days, as well as synced up to the passage-times of their homeworld. But the date on here is… Oh, I see! It’s given twice. The imperial date and the planetary one. What’s this got to offer…?”

She began to scroll through. “A lot of the writing here is not… super legible, and by that, I mean it’s symbols I’m having a hard time placing. They’re unfamiliar. I can tell a few of them are  _ related _ to written Prothean symbols we’ve seen before and in those I can make a decent guess at what they’re supposed to say, but, uh, not… not havin’ much luck with the other ones.”

“From what I’m seeing, though, there’s a  _ lot _ of numbers. And I think it’s trying to break them into categories? But - oh, I see, my decryption messed up the formatting. I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be columns here. Um, insofar as the Protheans formatted things into two-dimensional columns.” She rotated the text on the page, wincing as she did so. “Their text is three-dimensional, sometimes, and I hate it. I hate it so much.”

Outside, there came another crack and its echo, this time slightly closer. Zara glanced up at the doorway again, this time for a bit longer, before she turned back to her work.

“As far as I can tell… I know the symbols for people, for foods. I think this might be census data? But then why is it the first entry? Unless… well, we know this isn’t the Prothean homeworld. Which means - hang on, I have a theory. Let me see which of the ‘authority’ symbols I can find in here.” She began to flick through, wishing she knew how to use a search and find function on this ancient piece of technology. “While I’m at it, I should copy all the data…”

It was a literal miracle she’d managed to connect her own gear to pad, given that she  _ knew _ how ancient it was. There was no hope of a wired connection, but she did manage to wirelessly link the two, though it was tenuous at best. Still, better than she’d expected. Than she’d even hoped.

“I’ll - one second.” She paused the recording, then quickly activated a copying system to take down all the data on the pad, uncracked; its raw form would be best. She’d copy down the data in each iteration of translation as well, to ensure that she had every version in case something to corrupted somewhere, or she made an error.

With that in place, already running, she tapped the holo-window and restarted the recording. “Copying the data now, in sets, between decryptions and translations,” she said. “Blah, blah, blah. You know what that means. Moving on.”

“So I think - and I’m not sure, but I  _ think _ \- that this might actually be a sort of… colony record? I think? This thing clearly isn’t a kid’s toy, that’s for certain. It’s just really old. Which would match up with it being a colony record. But that - that would be  _ truly _ ancient.” Zara paused, scrolling back up to the date at the top. “And, yeah, I thought it was an error, but this is… uhhh, let me think. With the gap between Prothean extinction into account and the… plus the gap years for the… okay, I think this tech is about fifty-six thousand years old.” She paused “Haha! I’m holding it and insulting it! And using it!”

Actual working Prothean technology wasn’t as rare as some made it seem, but this was still a special event. “Dang,” Zara said. “The university’s gonna lose their collective  _ minds _ when I get this back off-world. Honestly, I shouldn’t be doing this, I should just be packaging it to take it off-world to be studied. But, you know, when have I ever actually done what I’m supposed to when it comes to research? They all know my methods are non-traditional.”

In the valley outside the crypt, she heard a sound like a firecracker going off, a series of short pops. She knew there were varren in the valley, and she knew what that was - mercenary looters, probably come to search the crypts at her site for eezo. If they knew she was here, they’d probably try to kill her; they wouldn’t want anyone identifying them.

Zara sighed and hunched her shoulders up, pressing her back against the cool stone wall. “Um, just gonna keep going,” she muttered. “So this - as far as I can tell, this first file is a record of what appear to be almost like, um… starter amounts? Starter quantities? Founding quantities? Seed supplies, for a colony just starting on this world. Wow… I knew this area was old, but to think this crypt is from one of the first Prothean colonies on this world. And they built cities here!” She shook her head. “That’s incredible. That’s really something. And now, I know how many  _ seeds _ they had. But more importantly, I might be able to tell what kind of seeds, and where they came from, and who did the harvesting, and how they were grown, and what they were used for, and what kind of other things were grown, and how many people they could feed, and thus how many people were here, and how many people started here and how the population grew…”

She trailed off, scrolling back up to the top. “And there’s multiple files!”

The second was much the same, albeit with different numbers, and a later date. “Looks like this one was taken… I guess we would call it months later, but for this planet, probably closer to half a year. So, like, the halfway point of a year. That makes sense. Looks like the numbers stayed mostly the same? Which I think is good? For people, anyway, and this one has a ‘meat’ symbol so that’s probably some type of Prothean livestock.” She paused. “You know, it’s really weird to think of Protheans as having livestock. They’re the predecessors of our entire galaxy! And they had  _ space cows? _ ”

There was a great snarling sound from somewhere outside, echoing again. But it was close enough that it almost  _ didn’t _ echo, and Zara winced at the inevitable gunshot that followed. Yep, those were the varren she’d shooed away several times, clashing with the mercs. If she was lucky, they’d stay away from here. But it was the most active area - they’d be able to tell that from the location of the equipment strewn around, and it was apart from the rest of the site, signifying its importance. Still, she could hope…

“The third file here is… oh, god. Completely corrupted. I can’t do anything with this.” When Zara tried to open it, it flickered, then grayed itself out. “Shit. Um. I - uh oh. Well, hopefully that data got copied! Yyyyikes. Let’s just move on. Fourth one… more numbers. Oh, but this one has a blurb at the top, like a, um… like a personal note.” She leaned closer to the datapad’s glowing green holoscreen. “Give me a second… ‘unlike… home, we have… uncertainty,’ and that’s applied to a figure here that I think means, like, luck? Chances, maybe? They weren’t certain about their chances here? But they’re doing a great job so far! Judging by the numbers anyway. Though, uh, maybe the numbers aren’t actually good at all, and I’m misreading them, by human standards. Lord, I went to school for the language, but I’m still mostly good at digging, not at putting the puzzle pieces together! Ugh.”

There was a crash from somewhere outside, and Zara froze, realizing suddenly how much of her fairly valuable equipment was out there. She had crates of machinery and supplies just sitting out in the open, from when she’d moved them out of a sheltered area to dig there a few weeks back and hadn’t put them back. If the mercs found all her stuff - 

“Ah, crud,” Zara muttered, glancing towards the entryway. She could hear voices, but they were distant, indistinct, even when shouting. When not shouting, she couldn’t hear them at all.

“Looks like I’ve still got a few minutes,” she muttered. “Alright. Continuing. I think whoever owned this datapad - whoever’s ashes are in this crypt - must’ve been sort of a governer of the area, the one in charge. They weren’t too happy about their - ooh, yeah, hold on. This number is way different. This is the population number in file five, which if they’re taken every half-year, would be two and a half years in. Let me check file four…”

Zara flicked back, and then forward. “Yeah. The number for population dropped like a thousand between files four and five. Something must’ve happened. Natural disaster? Disease? Hmm.”

The voices outside were growing louder. Zara tried to ignore them.

“There doesn’t seem to have been a matching drop in their weird livestock numbers or their harvest numbers - which, um, that’s a new character. Harvest. Actually, the harvest numbers are  _ really good _ , I think. So it wasn’t starving from lack of food.” She shook her head. “I really don’t know what happened. That’s gonna probably need more info than I can get from it while I’m sitting here in the tomb while there are some looters with guns outside.”

As if on cue, there was a shout, and another crash. Zara closed her eyes for a moment, sighed, and rubbed her forehead. “This is a nightmare scenario,” she muttered, and set the Prothean datapad down. “I’m going to leave this in here for right now. End recording.”

The holo-window showed the end of her chosen tape, and she cleared her throat several times and stood. There were mercenaries in her valley, messing with her equipment,  _ probably _ looking for eezo, and she wasn’t interested in it.

She’d have to get rid of them.

Zara stood, took a breath, and stretched her shoulders out, feeling her amp already start to warm up. “Alright,” she said, to herself. “Alright.”

She strode out of the tomb, up the steps, and into Sheol’s perpetual twilight. Blue light glimmered around her body, sparking off her fingertips, and made the air around her ripple like a mirage.

She already saw them, spread out. There were six of them, all armed, clearly looking for her. They all whirled to face her, some of them raising their guns; that was fine. She wasn’t afraid of them. “Okay,” she snarled, and spread her arms out, lifting two of the boulders she’d moved out of the way of the crypt’s door the day before in a nebula of biotic light. “Who’s out here making a racket and  _ interrupting my research?!” _


End file.
